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Still unfolding from last night, a shooter (possibly more than one?) fired upon a country music festival in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay. Currently, 50 have died while approximately 200 are injured.

I won't be posting any articles because it's so fresh that there are some conflicting reports on numbers. Supposedly, the shooter has been identified as Stephen Paddock, a resident of the area. He killed himself after the shooting.

There are dozens of harrowing social media videos, being that people were already recording the concert. The following is a compilation of just a few that goes in chronological order. Viewer discretion is advised - the videos are distressing and there is also foul language.

This was actually one of the first videos I saw of the event. I thought there was going to be more about this. Some reports said it was the shooter's significant other but that was debunked when they found out she was out of the country.

It's weird. The guy is a multimillionaire, yet goes on a shooting spree that he's been planning for a long time. He doesn't fit usual terrorist profiles - but he's wired money to the Phillipines, which is dealing with Muslim trouble too.

Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?
-Clifford Stoll

It doesn't really matter how you rationalise this kind of action when you take it. Son of Sam took orders from his neighbor's dog. It's an unhealthy, angry and self-diminishing mind that lashes out in this way. The same people are vulnerable to all kinds of suggestion and reason, and it's the isolation of their thinking that creates these scenarios. You can dress it up any way that you like, but it tends to come back to the same end result. This is similar to how a suicidal person's mind may deal in rationalising a justification to self-inflict.

The human mind is many things, and even the act of unchanging repetition has its effects upon the mind. Trying to target and punish would-be bogeymen is not any kind of positive reinforcement, it's a reactionary bandaid that does nothing to actually prevent anti-public hostility. Spree shooters are people trapped in their own mind where everything has culminated in this rationalisation. We can look at things like this in a collective fashion, but it all comes down to individual minds and bodies producing individual actions. The more people are decent to one another and supportive, not simply providing harsh criticism to one another but actually positive reinforcement and a clear path to better engagement, the better off we all can be.

I muttered 'light as a board, stiff as a feather' for 2 days straight and now I've ascended, ;aughing at olympus and zeus is crying